


Voices

by PeachGO3



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Katra, M/M, Racism against Vulcans, Sharing a Body, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Vulcan Mind Melds, the few jokes that are in here are pretty cracky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 12:29:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21631582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeachGO3/pseuds/PeachGO3
Summary: “You’re suffering from a Vulcan mind-meld.” – Now that’s a relief. Leonard is still trying to cope with whatever is scrambled in his head. – Set during the third movie.
Relationships: Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Spock
Comments: 18
Kudos: 101





	Voices

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn’t get [this tumblr post](https://green-blooded-computer.tumblr.com/post/141878529885) out of my head ever since I first read it, so I wrote a little something. I hope you enjoy ♡

**I.**

It’s not that Leonard doesn’t _want_ to flirt with the barmaid. He just doesn’t do it. They usually play around a bit whenever he comes here, and she’s beautiful as always. But Leonard somehow still looks away. Because flirting isn’t what he came for, their secret plan is. “Anybody been looking for me?” he asks. But no one looks particularly suspicious or dark. You had to have an aura of darkness if you were a criminal, Leonard was sure.

The barmaid’s bright eyes sparkle. “I have,” she replies, “but what’s the use?” She looks him down, but it leaves Leonard totally cold.

“What’ll it be?”

“Altair water,” Leonard says. It’s healthy and thirst-quenching. But the barmaid all but giggles. “That’s not your usual poison, doc,” she remarks sweetly. Leonard holds her eye-contact, slowly sinking into irritation. For lack of a better term. Calmly, he replies, “To expect one to order poison in a bar is… _illogical_.”

Wait, what?

“Got it,” she whispers and leaves. Was she creeped out? Leonard does not know what to make of her reaction and thinks that this fact should concern him more, because he’s usually very good at reading people. Not being able to do so should unsettle him at least a little bit. But no – he’s totally serene.

What unsettles Leonard instead is the unease with which he comments on the contact’s physical appearance: “How can you be deaf with ears like that?” There’s a rumble in his head when he eyes the stranger’s _deformed_ ears – are they deformed? No, it’s just what he looks like, isn’t it?

Leonard doesn’t have much time to think, because the name Genesis has provoked the contact and as he stands up to leave, Leonard reaches out and pulls him closer by his jacket.

They need to get back to Genesis, whatever the cost!

Just as the confrontation is about to go overboard, a firm hand lands on Leonard’s shoulder and guides him back into his seat, but that isn’t the part that gets Leonard’s hackles up – it’s that the man is being damn illogical. Offering him a ride home? And he even knows his name!

“Federation security,” the man clarifies and flips open his ID.

In an instant, Leonard tries to flee and stands up, but his legs won’t run and the guy can pull him back down easily. So, flight forward: Leonard doesn’t even have to look when he reaches for the junction between his neck and shoulder, that sweet nerve spot hidden underneath layers upon layers of stupid fabric.

The man doesn’t collapse.

Leonard tries again, harder, and this time he looks to make sure he finds the right spot, but his head hurts as if someone is flipping through the pages of his brain, like they’re trying to make him remember a complicated medical operation that he forgot about.

The base of the neck, wasn’t it?

Come on, the Federation mustn’t know about the charter, the whole mission is in danger!

Leonard has tunnel vision that breaks only when the security officer, frowning deeply, is taking his weak hand from his shoulder, saying, “You’re gonna get a nice, long rest, Doctor.”

Leonard blinks and searches his eyes for an explanation of what happened. Suddenly, his vision seems clearer, as though he woke from sleep. No, not again, he thinks in frustration. The headache has taken over again. He doesn’t protest when the officer takes him outside, and only now does the spark of the barmaid’s lovely eyes get through to him. But it’s in vain, because he’s being taken away and won’t be able to get that Altair water she’s carrying on her tablet. Or a nice conversation with her.

She pouts and Leonard looks down as his hands are being pressed to his back.

**II.**

Staying in a detention center is hell, Leonard thinks when his glance drops to the white walls once more.

Well, it’s not literal hell, thank God. Being hyperbolical is _unproductive_, he should stop it.

Oh. Groaning, Leonard closes his eyes. There it is again – he thinks just like Spock. Good God. Is this really the way his brain decided to remember his friend? By adopting his ways of thinking? This must be a medical condition, Leonard realizes with horror. Maybe some kind of guilt complex. Or compensation for sorrow. Now mixed with helplessness. Being unable to assist the others in chartering a goddamn Starship.

“Next,” the woman behind the counter says, and Leonard steps forward and frowns when she carelessly throws tonight’s meal onto his plate with that giant ladle. It’s unappetizingly brown.

“What is this?” Leonard hears himself ask.

She looks at him with tired eyes. “Goulash.”

“Goulash?” he repeats, trying to remember whether he ate that before. “It’s meat,” he realizes with a headache. “Sorry, I can’t eat that.”

“There’s nothing else tonight, because the midnight meals are the leftovers of the day,” she reels off, “but it’s not real meat because it comes from synthesizer kitchens, so it’s suitable for any diet. These synthesizers are some of the best the Federation has.”

Leonard feels relieved and smiles at her. “That’s all right then. It’s not a real animal,” he says, more to himself than to her, and then the headache fades away.

To his horror, the goulash’s taste still repels Leonard. It’s meat, nothing bad, he tries to say to himself, but each spoonful he feels like throwing up.

Sighing, Leonard places the flatware next to his plate and tries to catalogue what kind of trauma is affecting him – ‘cause he does have appetite, just not for… meat. Or peaches. Or peanuts, or literally any kind of comfort food he has. It’s not the sallow taste of the synthesizer, it’s the taste of these _things_. He’d much rather have a soup. And that damn Altair water.

But the kind barmaid is not here to bring him some, and he has to follow the center’s rules if he does not want to starve. How inconsiderate that they don’t offer a vegetarian meal. Leonard complains to the guards in a grumpy tone and they promise to take care of the food memory chips.

Crawling up like a dry leaf, Leonard falls asleep in his bed tonight, which is delightful, considering that his headache hasn’t let him sleep the last two nights. But he had a nightmare of Jim getting caught with a stolen Starship.

**III.**

It’s no guilt complex. It’s something far more severe, Leonard thinks when he recapitulates his day. No guilt complex has this kind of power. Attempting to go for a Vulcan nerve pinch – okay. Vegetarian diet – okay.

But understanding the Vulcan language?

_“I hear this is Doctor McCoy, from the USS Enterprise.”_

_“You heard correctly, guard. It is Leonard Horatio McCoy.”_

_“Outstanding. To have such a respectable man in here is remarkable.”_

_“I agree.”_

It had been hard, like trying to understand a weird accent. But he had understood. And before Leonard was able to react any differently, any _more logically_, he had blurted out, “Why, thank you.” His tongue twisted when he had realized his reply had come out in English.

The two guards had turned their heads to him, and their black hair was in such stark contrast with the white walls that Leonard felt the need to blink. In an attempt to not make this conversation awkward, his smile stayed friendly, but the Vulcans seemed irritated.

“Excuse me, have you not been talking about me?” Leonard had asked out of politeness. If they had heard of him, then surely Spock must be some kind of hero to them.

Or not, he had thought wearily.

Hands behind her back, one of the guards turned to leave. _“Keep a watchful eye on him.”_

“I won’t make any trouble,” Leonard had called after her, but at this point he wasn’t entirely sure about that anymore. There was a warm sting in his head. He should get his head checked, all right. Get your damned head checked, goddammit. Had they been speaking Vulcan at all?

_Logically_, they could not have, Leonard says to himself, because he can’t speak or understand Vulcan. Never learned it, never picked anything up. So, if he had been able to understand them, it must’ve been English in the first place.

Ha. All is good then. With delight, Leonard realizes he is getting better at this logical thinking.

**IV.**

Ironically, the detention center really couldn’t be hell, because it is far too cold for that. Each day, Leonard is freezing more, he even has goosebumps. The only place of warmth are his quarters, where he can order the thermostat to heat up the room just as much as he likes. Today feels like a 49,6° Celcius. Luckily Leonard has got it all for his own, because another inmate would probably complain, he thinks as he remembers today’s lunch.

_“Aren’t you cold? Ahh, sorry, you’re Andorian, our biologies differ too much. How about you?”_

The human he had addressed had looked at him with a glare that made Leonard shudder even more than the coldness did.

So, it’s him. Not the facility. He’s the one that’s cold and shivering and craving for warmth, preferably from someone who holds him. Tightly. Leonard briefly wonders if that means he’s touch-starved, but he dismisses the thought as illogical and undesirable. But still, keeping the room at a high temperature makes him all comfy and calm, despite sweating like a sinner in church. In fact he’s so calm that he is in the mood to follow one of the guards’ advice by meditating.

“Have you tried that, Doctor?”

_Good idea._

“I haven’t. But it’s a good idea, I’ll try it out.”

He’s started it yesterday and managed to go through, what, six minutes maybe? Today Leonard wanted to go further, because meditating is indeed relaxing. It also calms his raging headache, and breathing exercises are always helping with whatever one was struggling. The longer, the better, Leonard figures. Today’s first try was circa eleven minutes, he realized with a glance to the clock. The second lasted about fourteen minutes.

Now he makes himself comfortable on his bed (he wouldn’t try crisscross applesauce again, no, he hurt himself too badly the last time) to start today’s third session. Concentrating on his breathing, emptying his head. He mustn’t think of the headache, because then it got worse. He just needs to block it out completely. Be one with the surroundings while simultaneously trying to detach himself from them. From the world. From the cold space he’s floating in, from the stars he tried to outrun so often in his career.

No, don’t think of that. Think of emptiness. Bare nothingness. Concentrate on your breath alone, maybe your brainwaves as well. Brainwaves, the mind. Your mind.

…to my mind. My thoughts… to your thoughts_… Doctor._

With a loud gasp, Leonard snaps out of his trance, breathing so heavily the guard on his door turns to watch him.

That was a voice in his head. And it wasn’t his own. It was another voice inside his head, and it made him throb with a stinging pain. Leonard is close to losing balance and falling straight from his bed.

“You all right?”

“No,” Leonard squeezes out, eyes pressed shut in pain. He holds his head with both hands now. “I… I need to see a doctor.”

**V.**

“These biobeds are nothing compared to the Enterprise’s,” Leonard notices with thin lips.

“Please, Doctor, don’t talk,” the detention center’s doctor reminds him, and Leonard falls silent. Of course, or else he’ll screw up the readings.

“I can see you’re uneasy,” the doctor says to him after she surveyed his data. “There’s some higher neural activity, and your blood pressure is a bit low.”

“That’s not it, all right,” Leonard snaps. “My head feels close to exploding.”

“Perhaps the high temperature of your room is a reason for that,” she snaps back.

“What about a possible trauma?” Leonard asks with his eyes glued to hers. “The aftermath of feelings of guilt, maybe?”

She eyes him with caution ere taking another look at the readings. “Nothing of that nature, Doctor. You are not ill, neither physically nor mentally.” She lowers the e-board and gives him a sympathetic look. “I can understand your want for self diagnosis. Being stuck here without giving the mind something to play with sucks,” she says.

“Damn right,” Leonard says. “I can’t live on sudokus and meditation any longer.”

She sighs. “But I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Medically speaking. If you yourself still think you’re unpredictable, then we can post another guard at your door without having to state any reasons whatsoever.”

“I ain’t dangerous,” Leonard blurts out, and she raises her eyebrows and replies, “I wasn’t implying that.”

“I won’t try to break out either,” Leonard assures her (because by now, Jim and the others must’ve left for Genesis some way or another, so there was no need for him to jeopardize the mission by trying to help them get going). He blinks and raises his hands in innocence. “I’ve already told that the Vulcan guards as well, I won’t try and skedaddle.”

Ske- what? Leonard stops every movement, and then he frowns in confusion, looking at the biobed’s table and murmuring, “That’s a made-up word.” He tilts his head – “Illogical. All words are made-up. Gosh, you’re so dumb, you could throw yourself on the ground and miss.”

“All right, before you’ll talk yourself into a rage,” the doctor intervenes loudly, “I’ll call someone to guide you to your quarters. Doctor.” She helps him stand up. “I know the way to my quarters,” Leonard defends himself, but then his headache literally forces him to his knees.

It hurts. It stirs. It’s as if someone rammed a hook into his brain and tears, tears, tears to pull it out of his skull while simultaneously keeping it in place with the stirring of a cooking spoon. It’s fucking terrible. But his quarters are warm. His blanket is warm, and it quivers in his shuddering fists, even after the doctors leave. All the other doctors. Faint voices whisper Leonard to sleep.

_What the hell is wrong with me?_

**VI.**

When Leonard wakes, he has the overwhelming desire to drink a hot cup of tea, so he gets up and asks the guard to accompany him to the dining hall. His limbs are powerless, but he can walk. In line, he tries to block out the laughter at the table next to him. What time is it anyway? He shivers as he realizes he’s lost all sense of time.

“But your guard’s a Vulcan, right? Pointy-eared dumbass.”

Laughter. Leonard rubs his eyes. He used to wind up Spock with his ears. Those stupid, careful, lovely Vulcan ears.

“He is! But he’s gone now, for two days already.”

“Gone, huh? Maybe off to his nest. Y’know, to fuck. Fuck her hard without all that precious logic of his. God, I’m so sick of him.”

“Could you stop this, please?” Leonard says aloud, but to no one in particular. His hairs are standing, and it’s not because of the coldness.

“What’s with you?” one of the men asks and gets up. The other tries to stop him half-heartedly. “Got a problem with me?”

“No,” Leonard says truthfully as he looks upwards. That guy is towering over him. “But I got a problem with how you talk about Vulcans,” he adds quietly. “Race hatred is unproductive and wrong.”

“Hm? I can’t hear you, granny,” the man laughs.

Leonard tries standing up straight. “I said, stop trash talking Vulcans, you moron,” he says not half as firmly as he’d like to.

“What? Why? Got a thing for those fuckheads and their big paws, huh? Like it rough, huh? Does he fuck you with logic or with his green dick?”

“Fucking stop it,” Leonard hisses with trembling fists. He can take him, he naturally thinks, and throws a punch – but ultimately, that lands him on top of another table. Fifteen feet from where he was standing. Before the giant can swing at him again, two guards intervene, and Leonard climbs from the table with shaking arms.

How could he misjudge his own strength so severely? He should’ve gone for the nerve pinch instead.

“No, you couldn’t do anything,” he mumbles. “You wanted to protect. Protect what? Protect who? He isn’t even here. He doesn’t live anymore…” Leonard’s voice breaks away and he falls flat onto the floor. The tiling next to his head tints red.

_Red?_

Panicking, he tries to get away, but his left hand crashes right into the table leg, and he hisses at the pain that rushes from his hand right to his head. “You’re a damn human, you ain’t got green blood, you idiot,” he mumbles under his breath to arrange his scrambled thoughts – but he fails.

Stupid racists. They’re a mirror of himself; he said nasty racist things to Spock all the time. Always pointing out the ears and mind and logic. Just to compensate for his own fear and frustration with space, he wronged him, badly so.

His heart aches.

“Spock,” Leonard breathes before he gets pulled to his feet and taken away. Alien voices whisper to him, he feels their breath brush his brains, he feels his chest clench, and he also hears people talking about how he will be transferred to the Federation’s insane asylum in New York.

“I’m not mad,” Leonard whimpers through the forest of whispers. His readings had been clean. “I can’t be mad!” He doesn’t know what is going on with him, but he is no madman. His readings had been normal. What are these voices saying anyway? It’s nothing useful, it’s nothing productive, it’s nothing logical. If they could just _help him_ instead of burn him.

Tears flow down Leonard’s face, but they don’t give release, they hurt. They make his skin scream. My mind to yours… “Help me,” he sobs.

**VII.**

Leonard is already in special quarters, intensely guarded, when Jim visits him. His joy over seeing his old friend breaks away instantly when Jim raises his hand in that strange Vulcan salute. “How many fingers do I have up?” he asks without batting an eye.

“That’s not very damn funny,” Leonard snarls, numb from pain.

Jim nods with that warm gaze of his in his eyes. “Your sense of humor has returned,” he remarks.

“The hell it has,” Leonard says, ready to drill him with questions about the Genesis mission, but first he has to grump about the hypo Jim’s fishing out of his leather jacket.

“Lexorin,” Jim says with a soft expression. Even with that hypo in his stupid hands, he’s on an even keel, as it seems.

_On what?_

Forget it. “Lexorin? What for?” Leonard asks. Lexorin against dissociative identity disorder – but he isn’t mad. Have they sent for the Admiral to cure him now? Leonard is about to unleash a tirade onto his dear friend, but Jim says: “You’re suffering from a Vulcan mind-meld.”

Now, if that ain’t a relief. Everything makes sense, perfect, logical sense.

_Spock._

It just leaks out of him: “That green-blooded son of a bitch,” Leonard says absently. So, it has been him, all the time. Driving him insane, drilling and pulling at his brains, even in death. “That’s his revenge for all those arguments he lost,” he adds bitterly.

Jim gives him a weary smile and takes his hand to inject the medicine, and suddenly Leonard remembers how comforting Jim’s touch can be. How brave he is. Because he’s come to save Leonard, to take him to Genesis and get Spock’s body to reconnect it to his soul so that he can find peace. Not with any Starship. With the Enterprise. That’s his escape plan.

“Jim, she’s all patched-up.”

“Scotty will make her fly,” Jim replies and gives Leonard and Sulu another weary smile. He’s determined, Leonard can see that in his eyes. He also feels it on a deeper level – which is probably the _katra_. Spock’s goddamn soul. God damn it, why give it to him, of all people? Just to terrorize him with all those strange voices? How petty.

_Stupid Vulcan._

Jim telling him that he even raises his right eyebrow just like Spock does not make it fucking better. ‘He’s not gone as long as we remember him’ – Leonard really wishes he hadn’t said that.

**VIII.**

“It’s sweet of you to come with us.”

“Aye, Doctor, I couldn’t possibly stay behind,” Scott replies with a heartfelt expression. Leonard returns the smile. With a lexorin shot every now and then, his headache is manageable and his thoughts are finally ordered. Yes, ‘ordered’ – all logical and calm, like a deep sea full of dark blue water.

Leonard pushes himself up from the engine hull he’s been leaning on. “How did you manage to sabotage the Excelsior anyway?” he asks with playful suspicion. “C’mon, share your secret, miracle worker.”

Scotty buries his chin in his uniform’s collar and smirks. “Aye, that new car, Doctor. Transwarp drive may be the future, but for now, those digital controls can be manipulated easily. Just disconnect them from the dilithium core, program a distractional message for that board computer, and-”

“Did you cut the X-connector?” Leonard inquires. That would be the easiest way.

Scott pauses for a moment, then answers, “No, Doctor. Too simple.”

“Agreed. Then you reprogrammed the circuits? Possibly using Gamma Point code, I presume?”

The old engineer tenses up. “Aye, I could’ve done that, Doctor, but then they could’ve put her back on track with only Gamma Point code,” he says.

“Naturally. Then it would be logical to add backup. As an insurance, so to speak,” Leonard hears himself say.

“Exactly,” Scott beams.

“What did you do?” Leonard asks with excitement. “Dark matter? Polarity mess-up? The core’s electric magnetism can be permanently damaged with as little a change as 0.00452 ampere, causing an alpha decay about fourteen times as fast as usually, and an overreaction in the security cage, whose alert, with the right programming, could be delayed for any desired time. The success quotient of being able to escape could be as high as… 98.945 percent!”

Scotty looks helpless. “Aye,” he says slowly, “could’ve done that. A… simpler way, in the Excelsior’s case, would be to stew those nifty circuits of her.”

His grin looks so proud that Leonard’s face melts into an affectionate smile. “You burned the circuits?” he asks.

“It may not be that _logical_,” Scott says with empathy, “but it sure was the most satisfying method.”

“I can see that,” Leonard says truthfully, even though part of him is kind of disappointed that this miracle worker went for the laziest route available. To put a name to that part – _Spock_ is disappointed.

Scott, far too sensitive for someone whose head is in Jefferies tubes most of the time, lays a hand onto Leonard’s shoulder and says, “My math isn’t very good, but I’m sure the success quotient of your recovery are a hundred percent. I know it’s hard for you, but I must admit, Doctor” – he smiles – “I’m mighty happy to know that a part of him is well and still with us.”

“Me too,” Leonard says softly, breathing in the oily smell around him. Scott had been there too, when Spock was about to enter the radiation chamber. Still Spock had chosen _him_. Only as punishment?

_Why?_

There’s no answer. Just an ocean without waves.

**IX.**

Spock’s great mathematical mind and his perfectly organized brainwaves enable Leonard to process the most amazing facts and math problems, now that the medicine is working and the headache is gone completely. Granted, it’s dull sometimes, but with each solved equation, Leonard feels a little jump inside him. Childish joy about the wonderful logic of numbers. It’s infatuating.

“Joy is a pretty extreme emotion,” Leonard teases quietly, but he’s chuckling as he speaks. The touchpen in his hand and the X-scanner in front of his eyes feel so natural as though he’d always monitored these readings. “We make a great team, you and I,” he says softly, careful not to let his emotions hurt the _katra_. “I’ll try and not scar your soul, if I can,” he whispers.

Can he hear him talk? Leonard is sure he can.

That voice he heard back in the detention center, that must’ve been Spock as well, although Leonard found he couldn’t remember its exact sound and tone. Logically, there must’ve been interference. Two souls inside one human, that ain’t easy. It would also explain the many different whispers instead of one familiar voice.

“Great logical deduction,” Leonard chuckles, and the sound makes Jim look at him with a tired smile. Oh, poor Jim. He’s so restless.

Leonard feels a warm sting, but this time it’s in his chest rather than his head.

Jim steps closer. “How are we doing?” he asks with a soft expression but haunted eyes. Wondrous choice of words. “How are _we_ doing?” Leonard repeats absently. His gaze drops down as the question echoes inside him.

“It’s funny,” he says, “you should put it quite that way, Jim. ‘We’ are doing fine.”

His captain blinks in dry acknowledgement.

‘We’. Yes, ‘we’ make a great team. And ‘we’ don’t have headaches anymore. “But I’d feel safer giving him one of my kidneys, than what’s scrambled in my brain,” Leonard says.

Jim nods. “You won’t feel unsafe much longer, Bones,” he says, voice laced with affection. Always so tinted with honest and unapologetic affection.

“Hey,” Leonard says, trying to cheer him up, “I didn’t say I felt explicitly unsafe sharing a head with his soul. On the contrary, sharing it with Spock’s is probably better than with anybody else’s.”

Jim smiles. “You’re probably right,” he says. “Still, you’re free to go to your quarters anytime. To relax, to… recollect your strength.” He presses his lips together. “It could kill you, Bones. I can’t lose you too.”

“Thank you, Jim,” Leonard says, and the words softly hit the dark ocean’s even surface, drawing circles.

**X.**

Leonard’s quarters on the Enterprise are heated up, but not as badly as his room in the detention center. The warmth embraces him with welcoming comfort – “I am touch-starved after all,” he sighs when his hand ghosts over his bed’s pillow. Not the orange plumeau case from ages ago, but tasteful grey. Spock liked those blankets, Leonard remembers – is it a memory or does he feel it right now?

He yearns to be touched.

Meditation would be wise to calm down. “Yes, meditation,” Leonard says absently and lays down onto his back, closing his eyes. Escaping this urge for a few minutes at least.

Steady your breath. That’s it.

The Enterprise’s engines are roaring somewhere beneath him, but the soft sound only encourages trance, Leonard finds. Calming down despite traveling deep space by warp speed is easier than he imagined.

Don’t think about deep space, Leonard restrains himself. Empty your head. There’s only the ocean and you. Leonard sees it before him, he smells the primordial water and he hears the waves as he dives in; he feels their coldness wrap around him –

He’s underwater. Sinking.

_Remember_.

The pressure down here is close to unbearable, but something keeps him from floating upwards. Leonard controls his breath, and, softly, asks, “What the hell?”

“Remain calm, Doctor. It’s me.”

The voice makes the water around Leonard move playfully, keeping him in place as he sinks deeper, into pitch-black currents older than time itself. And this time it’s only one voice pulling him, one magical voice, and Leonard twitches under its spell: “Spock? Spock? How could you…”

“Finally, you have reached a level of meditation deep enough to talk to me,” the baritone proclaims quietly. “I have tried to contact your consciousness this way many times before. Lexorin makes meditation the only possibility left.”

“Well, your… ‘communication’ didn’t work before,” Leonard says, and he can’t help but give his voice a tint of teasing, now that he’s freely himself again. But where is Spock? Is he here, in the water? This is not how he had imagined a goddamn reunion. Not that he _had imagined it_…

“Doctor, I want to talk to you.”

“About what?” Leonard asks. He pauses when he feels jumps of confusion in the water around him. “Spock, what is it you wanna tell me?” he asks, scared by the Vulcan’s silence. He wants to reach for him, grab his soul and keep it close.

“I… don’t know,” Spock’s voice replies after some moments.

“You mean you forgot?” Leonard asks.

“No.” Another pause. “Maybe. There was never a particular reason, I presume.”

Involuntarily, Leonard makes the depths shake with his irritation: “You ‘presume’? What is this? Are you all right?” A stupid, yeah, downright illogical question to ask, because Spock is dead, killed by radiation; he couldn’t possibly be ‘all right’, could he?

But then good old-fashioned human understanding kicks in, and Leonard muses, “Could it be that you just… wanna talk? For no reason other than having someone to talk to? Why, Spock! This is extraordinary!” He could swear the water is tinted with annoyance when Spock replies, “It seems that, for the time being, your human mind is affecting my _katra_, just as my _katra_ is affecting you.”

Leonard is all smiley, and the smiles keep him from continuing his way further downwards into the endless dark. “Well, I’m glad you reached out for me. Really glad, Spock,” he says, but it feels ingenuine without a hug or a hand to lay on Spock’s back. He only floats.

“I do have to say that I am deeply sorry,” Spock says. “I regret that I was not able to help you earlier, when you asked for my advice.”

“No, Spock,” Leonard says without a second thought. “No. I deserved that. If it took that to make me see, then so be it. I have wronged you so often, my friend. I deserved payback.”

“Doctor, please govern your emotions, or else the connection will fade away.”

Leonard feels everything shake and tries to steady himself. “Sure. Sure. But Spock, how can you expect me to not be emotional about what I’d done to you all those years? Or to not be happy to hear your damn voice again?” he blurts out against his conscience. “Y’know, despite you messing around in my head, I… miss you,” he says, and adds in his thoughts, And I’m gonna miss you when you’re gone for good.

But of course Spock can hear this because they’re sharing a mind. My mind to your mind, Leonard remembers.

“My thoughts to your thoughts,” Spock finishes the spell. But it does not stabilize, on the contrary, the water roars, it boils. Leonard indulges in this familiarity, in these emotions whose taste he thought he could never experience again, because they are so closely linked to his banter and friendship with Spock. Yes, he missed it.

“This feeling is mutual, Doctor.”

Waves of emotions push Leonard around, warm him, tease him. “Forgive me. I don’t want you to be dead, Spock,” he blurts out, floating upwards. It _is_ water, undeniably, and the pressure is high, but when it moves around his neck, his hands, his face, it has the warmth and the texture and the softness of _lips_. It’s magical.

Spock pauses because of the intense feeling that is this current. “I would advise you to refrain from telling the Captain about this mental conversation. He is already worried enough,” he manages to say.

Affection surrounds Leonard. He’s all choked up when he replies, “Agreed.” What is happening with him? What is this situation doing to him? His soul is craving for a cry, for something this ocean can’t provide. It’s not that the water is preventing him from breathing, but at the same time it feels like he’s suffocating.

As Leonard gets more and more desperate, all the while trying not to hurt Spock, the _katra_ whispers, “Can I say, Doctor, that… I am grateful for you having been near me before I decided to step into the radiation chamber. It was not, in any form, meant as a form of punishment or revenge. I feel utmost regret if you must die because of it.”

“We will save your soul. Spock,” Leonard says softly. “You know I ain’t scared of death. Don’t you worry about me. If anything, this beautiful soul of yours is worth dying for.” And now nothing can stop him, he’s being pulled, pulled, pulled towards the light breaking through the shimmering surface, where raw emotion is scourging the water. He’s drowning, suffocating if he can’t feel these emotions. He needs to _love_.

“Doctor, the connection… is weakening fast…”

Tears mix into ocean water. They’re just as warm and salty and heartfelt, glowing. “I can’t help it, Spock,” Leonard whispers.

“Spock…!”

Wet eyes open wide when Leonard is back on his bed, gasping, breathing deeply as though he just ran a marathon. He sits up. The water around him is gone, and the room feels cold again. Pulling his knees closer to himself, Leonard ruffles his hair in an attempt to clear his head, to comprehend what just happened. Trying to steady his breath.

Spock lives in him. Damn right, he’s not dead as long as he remembers him and his voice, that lovely Vulcan baritone.

Leonard loves him. Has loved him for a damn long time probably, which may have only fueled their arguments even further. Breath stabilizing, Leonard clutches onto his heart. And… his liver?

It takes him a few moments, but with a chuckle, he understands; it’s where the Vulcan heart is. “I’ve always wanted to tell you this,” he growls in adoration, “but for someone who claims to suppress his emotions at any time, you’re pretty melodramatic, do you know that?”

The world seems to warm up from inside his chest. Is that Spock’s response? Leonard snickers in disbelief, holding onto it.

A Vulcan _katra_ is old. It’s elegant and serene, as is anything Vulcan. It’s beautiful, like any form of life. It deserves to be restored so it can find its peace through _fal-tor-pan_. This much is certain, and damn it, they would go through with it. Rushing to Genesis, they cannot fail.

The warm, fuzzy feeling of peace in Leonard’s chest stays when he drinks his tea that night. It spreads to his hands and toes, and it warms his face like hands cupping his cheeks. It does not scar, it heals. And for the first time in years, it feels as though he does not have to fall asleep alone.

“Don’t you try and wake me up early,” Leonard mumbles into the pillow, affectionately, while far-away stars cast lights into his room and make shadows wander.

_You’re in my dreams_  
_You’re all I see_

_What do I do? I’m still waiting for you_  
_I’m just praying, but I don’t believe in miracles_  
_Like how I felt before_  
_I had nothing more than a feeling_


End file.
